Electrical connectors provide signal connections between electronic devices using signal contacts. Often, undesirable interference, or crosstalk, exists between neighboring signal contacts. A common approach to reducing crosstalk includes interspersing ground contacts among the signal contacts. However, at certain frequencies, signals may tend to “jump” through or across ground contacts, which may contribute to mistransmission and signal errors that are detrimental to the operation of the circuits and the connector.
Frequency domain techniques may be helpful to measure and evaluate the signal loss and crosstalk characteristics of a connector system over a range of frequencies. Viewing crosstalk in the frequency domain shows the measure of crosstalk energy on individual frequencies of interest, e.g., the data rate and significant harmonics. It should be understood that spikes in frequency domain crosstalk are undesirable, as the spikes may indicate spurious voltages between grounds at particular frequencies.
One known approach for addressing such spikes is to fabricate connector leadframe housings from a carbon-impregnated plastic. Though such connectors are advertised to have low frequency domain crosstalk, even in a data-transfer-rate range of about 10-20 Gigabits/sec, the use of carbon-impregnated plastic makes such connectors relatively expensive. It would be desirable, therefore, if there were low-cost solutions that address the problem of spikes in frequency domain crosstalk.